Round 60 signups are open here and ticks are starting on Friday, 9th January at 20:00 GMT.

The key changes for this round are as follows:
This round, buddy packs can hold up to 5 planets and will be joined by 1 late joiner planet at tick 336 (or buddy packs of 4 with 2 late joiners at tick 336).
XP has been changed so that those with a high score:value ratio have diminishing returns (as demoed in the recent winter round)
When you set your alliance to "war" with another alliance, it immediately starts a 72 tick period of war where you gain a roid cap rate bonus of between 3 and 5%, and an xp rate bonus (on roids stolen) of between 5% and 10%. This also holds true for all alliances "allied" in-game to the target alliance. You are penalised for landing on planets other than those you are at war with by 3% for cap rate and 5% for xp.

As many of you have no doubt noticed, some players are now required to pay value-added tax (VAT) on credit purchases.
This is due to a new EU law that states companies must charge VAT based on where the customer is located, rather than the supplier. This helps stop large companies such as Amazon avoiding paying VAT by artificially basing their company in a low-VAT country.

Before 1st Jan 2015, Ranul Tech paid VAT based on UK law. Because Ranul Tech is such a small company, it did not need to charge VAT on any purchase, as it was below a threshold for VAT charges. From the 1st Jan onwards, the law states that we must charge VAT to EU residents based upon where they are when they make the purchase (even if that's not where you're normally resident!).

There is a rather high administrative burden for such a small business with these new rules, but it looks like we have solved the majority of the hurdles due to the VAT being charged has to go the tax jurisdiction in which the purchase was made (however, it is possible that the law may be revisited to make it less burdensome for small businesses - after all, who wants to file 29 VAT returns, one in each EU country, every quarter?).

The impacts to you as a player are:
1. If you're buying credits from outside of the EU, prices will stay the same.
2. If you're buying credits from within the EU, you will be charged VAT on top of the normal rate (e.g. 20% increase in the UK).
3. Credit processing may take a little longer, especially as the system is new. Not all credit purchases will be automatically applied to an account and could take up to 48hours to be approved (in reality, this should be just a few hours).
4. All the tax handling is done by us: there's nothing extra you need to do!

If you have any queries about this, then feel free to contact support or PA Team and we'll do our best to make sure that we can get you an answer.